Archive for the ‘Advice’ Category

My first real job was working at “The House of Humor”, which was a novelty shop. I would work there at Halloween, and was there partially because I knew specialty make-up from working in the theatre (that was my first real thing in the theatre, inspired from being a fan of the sort of movies covered in Famous Monsters of Filmland).

As the holiday got close, we might have 300 people in line outside, waiting to get into the store. We would let ten people in at a time (this was a small place). They got five minutes to shop, which doesn’t sound like much, but I could give them pretty much individual attention…for about half a minute each. 🙂

We would do a sort of haunted house at our home for Halloween, and kids would come from quite some distance.

So, even though I don’t go out on Halloween any more, we still want to make it special for the kids in our area.

That extends to the treats…although, since we are vegetarians, we may not have the typical offerings. 😉 We not only want to avoid non-vegetarian items (you might be surprised that’s an issue with Halloween candy, however, marshmallow is not vegetarian, for one thing), but we like to do healthier treats (not that we tell trick or treaters that!).

An idea occurred to me this year…too late for Amazon to implement this year, certainly.

I would love to give out little Halloween themed Amazon gift cards!

We get about thirty kids, so I’d say we could do cards that were valued at a dollar a piece. Thinking of e-books, that would give a lot of variety, because of all the ninety-nine centers. I could see them also offering fifty cent cards, but that’s generally not enough for a book (ignoring all the freebies, of course).

We’d prefer little physical cards, which would presumably have a number you could enter and ideally, a QR code (Amazon does do QR codes for books).

While I would think they wouldn’t need to add a fee on top of the face value (I’d sell them in packs of ten), we’d be willing to pay a small additional amount to get little plastic cards (as opposed to print at home).

This could work for other events, too…Valentine’s Day at school comes to mind. I could also see just having packs with pictures of (generic or public domain) books on them…sort of all occasion, but with the specific suggestion of getting a book (there are many non-book items at Amazon, too, and some adults might prefer the guidance towards a book).

Now, to be clear, Amazon does already have a lot of gift card options:

What they don’t have is something with a Halloween theme where I could just 1-click (after choosing a quantity…again, I would do it as ten packs).

I think this could be very successful! Sure, some families don’t have Amazon accounts…but relatively few, I would say (in most areas), and most people could set up a free account to redeem if they wanted to do that. If they didn’t…the card wouldn’t be the only thing we’d be giving.

That’s what I think…what do you think? If this was an option, would you do it? Is the $1 amount a good amount (I think that’s more attractive than ninety-nine cents, based on my retail, including bookstore, experience)? What themes would you want to see? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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Note: thanks to reader feedback, especially from Edward Boyhan, I moved the older data (generally, more than two years old) to a page (Historical Snapshot) rather than a post.

Summary:

We still have a good shot to break five million titles in the USA Kindle store by the end of the year. Prices (I have to run the price point analysis yet) are pretty steady. “Spanish edition” e-books in the USA Kindle store broke 200,000. I’ve added a measurement, which can happen when Amazon adds new features: the number of books available through Prime Reading (1,013 this first time). Overall, things continue to look good.

I generally run this information through eReaderIQ.com (it’s just easier than Amazon), and there are some vagaries in the searches (both there and on Amazon). I do try to run it the same way every time, so unless Amazon changes something, it should give you a pretty good idea. NOTE: I’ve changed this explanation from saying “Jungle-Search.com” to “eReaderIQ.com”. It’s the same people and I assume the results are the same. eReaderIQ is just for the Kindle, Jungle-Search does Amazon generally. eReaderIQ has a slightly better interface for the searches. This has also changed back to it being run through Jungle-Search, although I get to I through eReaderIQ.

April 1, 2010 was “Agency Day”, when the pricing system for some of the largest trade publishers in the US changed. I’ve started tracking price points, to see how that is affecting things. These are not ranges: it’s how many books are at a specific price point.
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The free books referenced here are from the Kindle store: there are many other sources for free books

My search for textbooks definitely has false positives (books that aren’t really textbooks). I search for -domain (to eliminate public domain titles, which would be older books, generally) textbook. That would find a book about textbooks, for example

I searched for “Spanish edition” to find Spanish language books. That has some false positives as well

I look at price percentages of books in the range of one penny to fifty dollars, to eliminate freebies and limit textbooks

The price point analysis is for books at that specific price: it does not represent a range of prices

I compared the percentage of price points in the Price Point Analysis when I showed the difference…not the number of books

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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For about three years after the first Kindle was introduced in late 2007, Amazon didn’t have a mechanism for us to give Kindle books as gifts.

Customers talked about that a lot. After all, gifting books is great! In the paper days, I would buy a used copy of the first Doc Savage Bantam paperback, The Man of Bronze, pretty much whenever I saw it in a used bookstore. I wanted them so I could give them to people as gifts…and I did.

I would also buy other copies of some other books for the same reason.

I’m not the only who wants to give the same book to a bunch of people at once. It could be promotional/celebrational, like we were doing with Kris’ book. It could be a book club, or a class in a school. It could just be enthusiasm. Several people in my family read the same Harry Potter book at the same time when it was first released…and I think one of us bought a few as gifts.

Right now, it takes me going back and forth from the gift page to the book’s product page. I’d love to be able to enter several recipients on the same page. I wouldn’t need to be able to put an individualized gift message on each one, although that would be a nice option.

Multiple Gifts for the Same Recipient

While there are book “bundles”, omnibus editions, I’d love to be able to buy a selection of e-books of my choice and have my recipient get one e-mail. It would be even better if I could mix e-books and other items…like maybe give a gadget and an e-book about how to use it. Maybe give a movie and the book on which it is based. I do assume that the recipient would have to be able to selectively accept and exchange them…somebody might own one of them already, for one thing. Still, this would be a lot of fun!

Re-Gifting

I think it would be really cool if, when I got a gift, I could choose instead of keeping it myself, to pass it on to somebody else. That might be because I own it, or just because I think someone else would want it more. It does cost Amazon a small amount to process each acceptance of a gift, but I think this would really market some books.

A Better Way to See Who Hasn’t Picked Up a Gift

It takes me too many steps to check on a gift. I have to go to the Manage Your Content page, then change Books to Pending Deliveries, then change Queued for Delivery to Gift Orders.

I want on that page just one click to see them so I can work on fixing the issue.

Gift Matching

This one is a little more out there, but I could see it working. Amazon could let publishers do it and/or they could do it themselves. It’s a promotion: you give a set number of a book as a gift (let’s say five) and the publisher or Amazon donates one to a public library, or a disadvantaged person. I understand that if they give it to a public library, it would likely be for maybe a year. I would certainly be swayed by an idea like this…I would give away more gifts to help other people get them.

Well, I said five, so there you go. I can think of other ideas, but I’d like to hear from you, too. What improvements would you like to see in Kindle book giving? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

Based on what you are reading now, Amazon could download another book to your device before you finish, so it’s ready to go. The next book in a series is obvious, but it could also do one based on the same author or the same topic.

You wouldn’t be charged for it…if I was Amazon, I’d make an “On Deck” book not count against your ten borrows at a time you can have from KU.

You’d get one book at a time…if you chose not to read it (indicated by you starting another book), it could be replaced…again, automatically.

You could “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” the choices, but that’s not really necessary…if you read it, it’s a sign they made a good choice.

It also wouldn’t need to cost Amazon much at all. With KU books, the publisher doesn’t get paid the whole royalty just because it is downloaded…it’s based on what you read.

Yep, I think this could be great for many people, including publishers!

Naturally, I would want you to have the option to opt out of it. There are some people who really load up their Kindles, and others where connecting to the network can be an issue.

For people who don’t have KU, it’s trickier.

Amazon could still do it…downloading a free book for you based on what you are reading. However, that could have royalty implications.

No, it’s probably best as an inducement to get people to do KU…at least initially.

Another option would be to let you pre-authorize purchases. You could agree to purchase the next book in a series whenever it is released, or the next book from an author. I think that’s riskier, though…especially the author one. Authors sometimes write books which don’t really match up with the other books…and they might choose to follow a super successful book with a riskier one.

Still, I hope Amazon considers the idea! It helps Amazon and the publishers with discovery and predictability. It helps readers, again with discovery and with convenience.

What do you think? Does it sound like a good idea? Am I missing some reason you wouldn’t like it? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

These aren’t college bookstores…they don’t have books. 🙂 They are pick-up centers (and media centers…you can hang out and use Wi-Fi, try out Amazon hardware, that sort of thing).

The articles generally talk about Amazon getting closer to their customers…so I was thinking, why not give me a pick-up center at my house?

Right now, we don’t have Amazon items delivered to our house, due to a history of mail theft in our area (it has happened to us personally). We have them delivered to where my Significant Other works…which is a bit awkward sometimes. It can mean we get it a day later (it has to go through central receiving), and it’s obviously not good on the weekends.

We considered buying a locking mailbox, but they are pretty expensive.

What if Amazon sold you a mailbox just for their own deliveries? They could make it inexpensive, since they don’t have to profit on the box. If you were in a Prime Now city, you could get a delivery in an hour. It would be better for them, because they don’t have to gamble on you actually being there.

The other thing they could do very effectively is put something like a “dashback” button inside it for the delivery person. It would be like their

where you just push a button to order something. Instead, the delivery person would push the button…and it would automatically e-mail/text you to tell your package had been delivered.

They could sell it in different sizes…maybe even a Block size where neighbors might go in on it for big deliveries (although that would complicate the dashback idea).

You could secure it by locking it down, or installing it in a wall (Amazon can help connect you to handypeople who could help you with that).

At some point in the future, this could also be accessible to drones (flying or ground delivery). They would have some way to unlock the Amazon@home box…although it has to be something that people couldn’t steal from it easily. 🙂

Well, this is all just an off the cuff idea…but I like it. 🙂

What do you think? Do you think this would work? What would you pay for it? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Oh, two quick follow-ups to recent stories: Amazon has confirmed for me that you do not need to certify a disability to buy their

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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I recently had a conversation with somebody who was considering starting a blog, and that has come up from time to time.

I’m happy to give you what advice I can. I think I can reasonably say that I’m a successful blogger, although there are certainly people with more readers, and even more people who make more money at it. I’m not big on monetization: I have a full time job, so this isn’t paying the bills. I do want to make a certain amount to justify the time and energize I spend on it, and I do that. The subscribers (thanks, subscribers!), some of whom have been with me more than half a decade, really make it possible.

ILMK has been one of the top-selling blogs in the USA Kindle store almost from the beginning, although the audience of people who pay for a blog subscription is relatively small. I always like to recall the day I passed the Huffington Post and The Onion on the same day, and I’ve stayed above them since. Obviously, they have more readers and make money than I do.

For me, it’s not about making money…and that’s the first thing I’d say to anybody thinking about starting a blog…or any other project (I’ve taught project management). You need to decide how you’ll be able to tell it’s a success. That’s how you know where to put your energies.

Are you doing it to make money?

Are you doing it to promote a cause?

Are you doing it to improve your writing skills through practice?

Are you doing it because…you just have to do something creative?

Are you doing it to help people?

Are you using it to promote something else you are doing?

There could be other motivations, and it’s up to you what they are and how you will measure them. You can have more than one motivation.

For example, if you say you are doing it to help people (that’s one of my motivations), how will you know you’ve helped somebody? One way I can tell that is through the comments.

Once you’ve made that decision, you want to think about how much time, and perhaps more importantly, how much social energy you want to spend on it. I blog, but I don’t really do Facebook, because I don’t have the social energy left over for the latter. You can do the blog itself for free…I don’t pay for my WordPress.com blogs. I could pay for a more robust blog, but this one suits my purposes. It’s those energy and time costs that you need to consider.

Oh, and you need to decide on a subject area…but most people know that already.

At this point, you know what you want to do, how you’ll know if it’s a success or not, and how much time you are going to spend.

You are just about ready to start writing…but I do want you to think about how you are going to deal with comments. Will you allow them at all? I do…one of my favorite parts of the blog is the comments I get, especially when people respectfully disagree with me. I’ve learned a lot that way! Will you moderate them (review them before they are published)? If you don’t, you’ll have a lot of ads…I get (and reject) them every week.

Okay, start writing. 🙂 I recommend that you write two weeks worth of the blog before you publish your first post. If you figure you are posting one post a day, write fourteen posts before you put the first one up. Two weeks is enough of a buffer so you won’t fall behind. If something else sparks you while you are in the middle of the fourteen, that’s fine…write about that. You just don’t want to feel the pressure in the beginning, while you are finding your footing.

Part of writing the blog is thinking about the content. Will you just write articles yourself? Will you do interviews? Will you have guest writers? There are a lot of possibilities.

Now, pick a platform. As I mentioned, I use WordPress…it’s pretty simple to use, and seems to work reasonably well and reliably. It’s been around for a long (knock virtual wood), which suggests stability for the future.

Perhaps part of that decision: if you are going to monetize it, how will you do that? Will you take paid advertising (like Google AdSense, or other ads)? I’ve chosen not to do that….if you ever see ads on the website, WordPress put them there, not me. 🙂 Will you do paid subscriptions, perhaps through Amazon (that works well for me)? Will you ask for donations? Will you be an Amazon Associate, so you can get paid when people follow links from your blog and then buy something?

You’ll also have to decide how you will promote the blog. Social media? If you don’t have a Twitter account, will you start one? Will your blog have a Facebook page? Are you going to promote the blog by offering your expertise…if so, where?

Once the blog is running, how will you evaluate how it is doing and make adjustments in order to improve it? You’ll get stats…you’ll probably get so many of them that you can become addicted just to looking at them. I don’t pay much attention to those…I do look from time to time. If I was trying to make my living just on my blogs, I’d pay more attention to it. I do poll my readers from time to time…that helps.

One last thought: how will you make your writing good enough for what you want to do? I do get asked that one, although not always phrased that way. The most important thing about being a writer is writing. 🙂 You become a better basketball player by playing a lot. You become a better writer by writing a lot. However, the second most important thing is reading. Writers read, it’s that simple. That doesn’t mean you are going to copy what someone else is doing, but you may find rhythms of speech that you like, and you’ll recognize what makes you feel good when you read it.

Don’t judge yourself too harshly. Writing a blog, especially a daily one, isn’t like writing a book. That would be like comparing your casual conversation to your doctoral dissertation. 😉 They are two different types of communication. Some people may spend a week when writing a book on one page…and I write the equivalent of something like four pages a day. Naturally, it won’t be as polished…but for many blogs, that’s part of the charm. It’s more like a conversation than a lecture, and readers like feeling the spontaneity and emotion.

Well, I hope that helps! Blogging is a big part of my life, and helps fulfill it. I think it makes me a better person, which helps with my relationships, both at home and at work. When I help someone, that makes me feel good…and that’s a good influence on how I treat others. 🙂

If you have more questions about blogging, or comments about what I’ve said (you may be wiser on part of this than I am), feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

This would also be “sticky” for Amazon…it would make people much more reluctant to shop somewhere else. In many cases, people probably wouldn’t even remember the actual names of the items.

Suggested event: Amazon event

I think I described this pretty well when I first suggested it, so…

“Amazon could host something in Seattle. They could show off new hardware, have Amazon KDP authors there, have developers of Amazon apps and Alexa Skills, do some international things, maybe show off the Prime Air drones…even Prime Now riders. 🙂 Wow, people would really talk about that! It could also counter some bad publicity, by letting people get behind the curtain a bit, and showing happy employees.”

I’d love to see them do this once a year…and I would totally want to go!

Suggested feature: digitizing service

There is still a lot of content out there which is in the public domain and hasn’t yet been digitized. There are also cases where someone has the rights, but only has paper editions.

Amazon could offer a digitization service.

People would send in something to be digitized, and they would attest that it was either public domain or that they had the rights to it.

Amazon would digitize it (they could invest in hardware/process which would make it relatively easy).

The owner could be required to add something to it to create a new copyright (illustrations, an introduction).

The item then appear in Amazon’s store. The owner gets a cut. Amazon gets a cut…and there is a period (maybe three months) of exclusivity for Amazon to sell it.

This is another one I think could be a very big deal…I think Amazon could do it safely, in terms of reasonably avoiding infringement.

Suggested feature: social playlists

I originally suggested this for Prime music, but it could work for videos and books (especially Kindle Unlimited), too.

Customers create playlists.

Other customers “like” them.

Ones with more likes are more visible.

I don’t think Amazon would even need to compensate the customers for that.

Ideas to producers marketplace

I think Amazon has really tried to get around the traditional content providers (at least to some extent) in the past year.

If you are able to create your own content, Amazon has a way for you to get distribution. You can put your blog into the Kindle store, you can put book into the Kindle store, and so on.

I’d like to see Amazon set something up where producers can connect with people who have ideas…and Amazon takes a cut for facilitating it, and again, could get a short term exclusive for selling.

Let me give you an example.

I have what I think is a good idea for an app (I’ve had it for years).

I think it would sell moderately well…no Angry Birds, but I do think people would like it.

I could write the content…but I’m simply not going to program it.

I used to teach programming, and I could learn it…but I’d rather just write the content, sell it to somebody to develop and distribute, and get royalties.

I’m sure many other people have ideas for apps…or TV series or movies or books.

Amazon wouldn’t work out the deals…that would be between the producer and the person who thought of it.

There would be reviews and ratings of the producers, to help people choose.

This one is a bit tricky, but Amazon could do it, I think.

This idea of “three month exclusivity” would make Amazon very attractive, and keep people visiting. The rights reversion would mean that the items would get to other stores…but as a secondary market.

I’m always curious what you think, and you are more than welcome to comment on this post. I’m also going to do a poll:

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

That doesn’t mean the Voyage is selling poorly…#15 is still pretty good.

They had a recent deal on the Fire Phone, which might have bumped it up…but it supports what I have been suggesting…that the Fire Phone isn’t done yet. 🙂

I’m still thinking they might find a way to tie especially into the Amazon Echo…although when the Alexa Voice Service starts showing up on other devices (which will happen soon, I believe), it might be harder to make that a selling point.

It’s interesting: there are a bunch of Dash buttons in the top 100. I wouldn’t have thought those were doing much at this point.

None of this suggests any weakness for the Kindle EBRs or for the Fire tablets, in my opinion. It’s just a paradigm shift for me to think of that as not the whole of Amazon’s hardware business…and not even the leading component it of it (based on bestseller rank…more EBRs are sold overall, I’m sure, since there are so many models).

It’s very likely that we’ll see a refresh of the EBR/Fire tablet line announced soon…maybe in September, so not far away.

Of course, with all of this Amazon hardware, we may start seeing an Apple style announcement of lines. We could even start seeing some sort of developer meeting…even a Disney-style D23 type of event. Actually, that could really work!

Amazon could host something in Seattle. They could show off new hardware, have Amazon KDP authors there, have developers of Amazon apps and Alexa Skills, do some international things, maybe show off the Prime Air drones…even Prime Now riders. 🙂 Wow, people would really talk about that! It could also counter some bad publicity, by letting people get behind the curtain a bit, and showing happy employees.

I would totally want to go!

What do you think? Surprised by the rankings? Do you think of the Kindle when you think of Amazon? Would you want to go to an Amazon Expo? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

the AAP (Association of American Publishers) has released its final figures on book industry sales for 2014.

You can see a lot of the specifics in the article, and I don’t want to take too much away from that (I recommend you read it if you want to get a sense of the future-building trends).

I want to just highlight a couple of things.

First, there was generally growth. Oh, not across every genre and every format, but overall, the publishers grossed more. They also generally had higher unit sales.

The latter is probably the more important if you care about how many people are reading (or how much they are reading). If the public as a whole reads 100 books in one year, and 200 books in the next year, they read more books in the second year. Of course, I suppose that if the books were on average less than half as long, they’d be reading less. 🙂

I always try to be careful about asking the right questions.

One of the things I do is “performance improvement”. I look at processes, and see what I can do to make it better.

I’ve had quite a bit of training on this, but I often find that it doesn’t really address the important question.

Let me give you an example.

I was given a sample problem.

A recreational tourist spot is concerned because people are catching fewer of a specific sportsfish. Before we go further, let me say that I am a vegetarian and don’t fish. 🙂 However, that doesn’t mean I can’t address a hypothetical. 😉

We were given specific figures for two years, and asked to formulate a proper “problem statement”.

Well, you could plunge right into trying to solve the problem of why they aren’t catching as many of that species. We were even given a guess by them, that it had to do with barbed hooks and catch and release.

They’ve told us “what’s wrong?” which is the first question we are supposed to ask.

However, my second question would always be, “What’s bad about that?”

That’s because I don’t want to waste time and effort “fixing the problem” if it isn’t really the problem.

Does the place really care if people aren’t catching as many of one type of fish?

Probably not.

They care if they are making as much money as they were.

They might assume that people are less happy, and therefore less likely to come and spend money.

What if, though, they are catching fewer of that fish…because they are catching more of another fish they like better?

What if they are spending more time (and money) in the resort arcade, and less time fishing?

That’s what you need to determine: what’s bad about that?

It might also be, “What would be good about that?” You are usually trying to remove something bad or add something good. The bad exists now; the good is an (currently non-present) aspiration. Of course, the good may be more of something they have now, but the volume they want doesn’t exist now.

What we often really trying to influence is how people feel about things, since that will tend to influence their behavior.

So, my guess is that publishers selling more units means that people are reading more books, and I think an increase will suggest that will happen more in the future…but I don’t know for sure.

The growth in gross could indicate more sales, but may indicate higher prices. Since the book sales were up 4.6%, and the unit sales increased a smaller 3.7%, that suggests that prices are rising faster than unit sales.

Second, there was a particular figure that was literally two orders of magnitude higher (the “tens” is an order of magnitude, the hundreds is another, the thousands is another…that’s pretty much the way it works) than any other figure in the tables in the article!

It is also, I think, highly significant.

“Trade books” are the books you would have bought in a bookstore: not textbooks and that sort of thing, but fiction and popular non-fiction.

Looking at “Trade Book Sales by Format”, comparing 2014 to 2013, the standout was a new category: e-book subsers (subscription services).

They went from .3 million dollars in 2013 to $13.5 million in 2014, a more than four thousand percent increase!

on July 18th of 2014, but it’s unclear if the AAP figures would be impacted that much by KU.

Indies (independent publishers, like me) make up the bulk of KU…and they aren’t members of the AAP.

However, even though none of the Big 5 (the larges US trade publishers: Simon & Schuster; Penguin Random House; Hachette; Macmillan; and HarperCollins) are currently participating in KU (I’m thinking that at least one may join before the end of the year, at least for some backlist titles), other traditional publishers are (Scholastic, for example, is both a member of the AAP and in KU).

The article says

“For both 2013 and 2014, estimates for the entire industry are based on actual sales supplied by about 1,800 U.S. publishers, from which AAP extrapolates by using a variety of sources to estimate sales for publishers that don’t report data.”

That means the AAP is at least guessing at the sales for the non-reporters.

My guess is that subsers are going to see even bigger growth in 2015 versus 2014.

Then, they may slow down.

I think they have a limited, but significant, appeal.

They are most cost effective for (in the aggregate for the user of the account) people who read a lot.

In the case of KU, you can have ten books out at a time. A family with four readers will tend to get more value out of KU than one person…unless that single person reads a lot, and the family doesn’t.

As a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, my guess (there is a lot of guessing, in this post) 😉 is that the majority of books in a single year are bought by people who don’t buy a lot of books. 🙂

That may seem odd, but look at it this way.

Let’s say that ten percent of the people are “serious readers”…they read a book a week.

We’ll work with a population of 100 people to make this easy.

The casual readers read…let’s go with four books a year.

The ten serious readers read about 520 books a year.

The casual readers read 360 books a year.

However…

At the holidays (including things like Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, graduation, birthdays…) those casual readers buy books for the serious readers, and for other casual readers.

If my 880 books above represent 83% of the sales, that would make about 1,050 total (rough guess). Let’s make this easy…and say that half of the books are bought by serious readers.

I think the bigger market for subsers is serious readers…so based on all that geeky, highly speculative math stuff I just did 😉 I wouldn’t expect subsers to get easily beyond 50%.

Regardless, that’s a lot of room for growth. 🙂

You can give KU as a gift. If KU gets a Big 5 publisher, and/or people really start to perceive as being a good way to encourage kids to read (I’m hoping Amazon is working on marketing for that…showing a kid saying, “I can’t find anything to read I like”, that sort of thing), it could get higher.

I’d be impressed if the subser sales doubled next year, and were half again as high in 2017.

I’ll keep an eye on it…

What do you think? Will subsers continue to grow? Were my numbers above so speculative as to be silly? 🙂 If you think so, what are your guesses? If we could include indies, how much would that change this? Would e-book growth be much higher? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Your Echo (not yet available to the public on general sale, but a number of people have them, including me, when they opened it to invitation only sales) can now read you your Audible audiobooks!

Now, some of you might be surprised that I’m excited by that. Regular readers know I great prefer to listen to text-to-speech (TTS…software reading a book out loud to you) as opposed to audiobooks…unless I’ve already read the book.

For me, an audiobook is like a movie: it gives me someone else’s interpretations of the characters. Even when the person reading the audiobook is the author, I prefer to layer that onto the words myself.

Listening to TTS is, for me, like sight-reading…reasonably neutral. Yes, there are some mistakes (is “lives” the plural of “life” or a verb, for example?), but that’s akin to typos in a p-book (paperbook)…I do okay with those in both formats.

So, there are definitely times I might want the Echo to read me a book I’ve already read.

If you go into your Echo app (you probably have it on your phone, but you could be getting to it on a computer at http://echo.amazon.com), you’ll now see “Audible” as a choice in your menu.

“Audible” is an audiobook company, owned by Amazon.

Even though I’ve almost never bought an audiobook, I have 41 books there. That’s from free audiobooks, often that you can get because you bought the e-book.

If I want to hear Tim Curry reading A Christmas Carol, for example, I can now ask the Echo to play that for me.

This also works with Audible books you have with many books you may have borrowed from

Skipping chapter is not currently supported by voice. You can skip chapters using the Echo app.

It will, by the way, know where you were in the book…even if you were sight-reading the e-book (if it’s Whispersync for Voice compatible).

By the time the Echo is released for general purchase (I’m guessing that’s in July), it will be quite impressive and even practical.

I guess I should say a quick word about what the Echo is. It’s an “ambient computing” device. You are using it somewhat like you would use Siri on your iPhone, but it’s always on and available. It can hear you quite well…across a room, perhaps in other rooms (and the latter definitely with an included remote).

Will it become part of your life?

I think so. It has recently been passing a test of that for me. 🙂 I find myself wanting to use it when it isn’t available. In other words, I spontaneously see a use for it, not just when I see it or consciously think of it.

For example, I got out of the shower this morning, and wanted to hear the news. I’m away from my Echo right now, but I just wanted to say, “Alexa, what’s the news?” I would have heard a summary from several sources, some of it in recorded human voices, some of it via text-to-speech. Instead, I had to go into a different room and turn on the TV for CNN. That doesn’t sound like much, but it was an inconvenient time.

More than once, I’ve wanted to ask the Echo for weather information when it wasn’t available.

Oh, I’ve also now reordered something using the Echo. That worked just fine. It’s really a remarkable product:

We have animals around our house. We aren’t in the wilds, we’re in a suburb…but there is open space not far from us. We don’t see raccoons at our house, for example, but they might get under the deck. All of this gets our terriers really going: that’s part of why we are having somebody do yard clean-up right now. That should reduce unwanted animals. Oh, and I just found out one of our neighbors had a family of red foxes under their house! As the California drought continues, we’ll see a lot more of this…particularly, cougars in the suburbs.

This product is just like a regular kitchen garbage bag…but it smells like mint. The smell is somewhat strong at first, but not unpleasant.

We had a spot where there was a rat hole, and I tried a few things. Just sticking one of these bags in the rat hole worked! No sign of them at that hole again (which I had even covered up with aluminum foil previously, which often works…they chewed through that).

I was told what the cost of reordering the bags was going to be (you can currently only reorder Prime eligible products…not order something new, and not something which isn’t Prime) and could have declined. Interestingly, despite what I just said, this order wasn’t Prime…but had been last time, I think. It still ordered it.

Let me share with you a suggestion I’ve made to Amazon (through the Echo app), which I think could be huge for them.

I suggested that they let us give items we’ve ordered “friendly names”…”Pat’s vitamins”, “Mint garbage bags”, “Fluffy’s favorite cat toy”, and so on). That’s especially useful for the Echo, but would also be valuable for searching orders at the website

It would greatly add to “stickiness” for Amazon customers as well. You might not even remember the formulation of those vitamins (although it would give you the official name when you reordered it as part of the confirmation), which would make you less likely to want to go somewhere else. If you had one hundred of those (we could have that), recreating it would be a bear, even if another site allowed it.

I told them I’d like to be able to retroactively go back through my previous orders and add those names.

We’ll see if we get it. 🙂

Until then, for those of you who can, enjoy your Echo reading you a book around the house!

Whoops, one last thing: at this point, the Echo doesn’t have a sleep timer…so if you start it reading a book and then fall asleep, I assume it would just keep going until the book finished. I suspect a sleep timer is coming…

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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